Negligence towards sexual assault reports violates protocol and promotes violence
Students deserve to feel comfortable reporting cases of sexual harassment, assault and rape and feel confident that action will be taken by authority figures or administration. The recent allegations of the Westlake High School [WHS] administration’s unresponsiveness to sexual assault reports prove that this is not the case in the Conejo Unified School District [CVUSD]. The Panther Prowler staff finds it unacceptable that students are uneducated on reporting procedures and Title IX.
The admin is responsible for supporting students who are experiencing sexual harassment on campus to ensure they feel comfortable enough to report these incidents. The WHS administration was accused of negligence towards sexual assault reports from two attending students. On May 2, WHS students marched out of their classrooms holding signs in protest of sexual assault culture. Some read: “Silence is not safety, “Halls are not hunting grounds,” and “No more cover-ups; no more victims.” It is a sad reality that if the student body did not advocate in support of their peers, the victims’ stories would have gone unheard, as the school administration treated these cases carelessly. It brings to mind the question of how many cases go through the school without any justice. In 2018, the Prowler staff wrote a cover story on this same topic, and now, in 2025, over six years later, the sexual assault culture in schools has not changed.
On April 24, The Acorn reported that 2 students were raped and sexually assaulted by the same male student in an article headlined “Allegations of mishandled sexual assault cases surface at Westlake High.” When students open up to administration about sexual assault, the school is meant to provide students with information on the following three ways of formally reporting them: filing a police report, a Title IX complaint and a state Uniform Complaint Procedure. However, both students claimed that they were only informed of one route of reporting: a police report.
Under the federal law, Title IX, all school personnel are required to report instances of sexual assault and sexual harassment. By dismissing students’ accounts of being sexually assaulted by another student on or off campus, the WHS administration disregarded the safety of their students.
Throughout the reporting process and initial conversations about the assaults, the school and state officers showed negligence towards both of the girls by not taking action in a situation that requires a grave amount of empathy, according to The Acorn. It is disheartening that mandated reporters showed such an inhumane response to students’ dire calls for help.
The process following the report of sexual assault turns into a blame game. Where students argue that their school did not make them confident enough to report, administrators may dispute that it is not their responsibility. They may state that without a report, what is their role meant to be? This situation puts all of the responsibility on the student, yet none on the trusted adults who are there to protect them. In addition, one student waited over two years to report her assault, and the other waited multiple months. Without hard evidence right after the event took place, the school is unable to fully investigate the incident and find whether the accused is in fact the perpetrator. Even though the victim might feel unsure about confiding in an adult that is a mandated reporter, it is important that the incident is reported.
The hallways of the school have become a place where, when students walk through them, they do not know if or when something will happen to them or whether something will be done about it. It is the school’s responsibility to take care of its students on school property in cases of harassment and abuse. It is alarming to see that cases such as these have not been taken seriously. No student deserves to walk to class scared of encountering their assaulter. The act of assault on a person will affect every sense of the victim’s life, while the assaulter goes on with their life without having trauma follow their every step.
Not only is it surprising, but what is going on at WHS is unnerving, knowing that the perpetrators are still allowed to go about everyday life with only a slap on the wrist. Time after time, CVUSD has proven to students that it will not handle sexual assault reports properly. Fostering these types of actions makes it so the perpetrators have no consequences and the victims are left in the dark about whether the school administration will do anything to help.
The situation sheds light on this behavior not only at WHS but at other schools, including NPHS. Our student body hopes that when students are in a time of need, administration and staff will come to protect them and not just brush them to the side. After all these years, if sexual assault does not get the attention it needs, it will keep on happening within schools.
